Alabama 3

Picture a Southern itinerant preacher toting a guitar, a Bible, and a copy of the Communist Manifesto trudging along a country road in the deep American South on his way to a rave after leaving a drug rehabilitation center. Now, imagine asking this person for his top-five Desert-Island Discs. Coming in at number one would be Alabama 3’s new “retrospective album” (a.k.a. ‘Greatest Hits Album’—yes, it is an institution) entitled Hits and Exit Wounds. And that’s not to say that the rest of us couldn’t enjoy or relate to it as well.

For those of us unfamiliar with British country/dance music, Alabama 3 (or technically A3 in American markets since country group Alabama filed a lawsuit) is a group from Brixton—not Birmingham—who emerged in the late 90’s. They have released six albums, starting with 1997’s Exile on Coldharbour Lane on up through 2007’s M.O.R., which are all full of songs that blend dancetastic house music with deep-fried Americana. Perhaps their most famous fan is Tony Soprano, as Alabama 3’s “Woke up This Morning” is what we hear from Tony’s car as he turns onto the New Jersey Turnpike during the opening credits of everyone’s favorite HBO series about mobsters.

Of course, at first listen, Alabama 3’s self-proclaimed idiom of “sweet country acid house music” seems like a novel combination of disparate genres, making the group’s music—gasp—original. And it is. Kind of.

One would certainly be hard pressed to find another musical outfit that blends good-ole-boy country, blues, and gospel with dance music as well or to the same ends as Alabama 3. Combining these genres allows the group to take an interesting, often tongue-in-cheek approach to dealing with issues like politics, spirituality, and scene culture. And Hits and Exit Wounds gives us a taste of Alabama 3’s broad thematic and artistic wingspan. Songs like the pun-titled “Sad Eyed Lady of the Low Life” paint a picture of a destructive dance-culture lifestyle, while songs like “Too Sick to Pray” make full use of the gospel/blues dichotomy in the music to highlight the archetypal battle between faith and doubt in couplets like “Just because I burned my Bible, baby / It don’t mean I’m too sick to pray.” And then there are songs like “Mansion on the Hill” that make political statements such as “There will be peace in the valley sometime / As soon as we get the key to the mansion on the hill” that would do uncle Karl proud.

But while Alabama 3 do make expressive use of their penchant for playing amped-up harmonica and lap steel over programmed dance beats, does their genre-blending style make them musical/artistic geniuses? After all, genre collages are nothing new to postmodern pop music. We all remember “rap rock” or “nu metal” or whatever you want to call it, which poured hip-hop and heavy metal into one musical glass, making one angry cocktail. And hipster-friendly music is no different. Alternative country, for instance, is nothing more than country-inflected punk or the other way around.

Now, none of these genre-combos are necessarily “bad” or “uninteresting” and neither is Alabama 3’s music. But albums like Hits and Exit Wounds, just like No Depression and Hybrid Theory before it, bring up the question of whether or not anything truly novel has happened in the last 20-30 years of popular music. Sure, combining contrasting musical styles makes intriguing music, but does such a combination really constitute a completely new genre? And have any truly original genres emerged in popular music since rap and punk were born in the late 70’s? I’m not saying I have the answers, but I do know that these questions should be asked.

So maybe our eclectic preacher friend and Mr. Soprano are on to something. Hits and Exit Wounds is a good springboard for contemplation and discussion of contemporary movements in pop culture and art. And that is why it’s worth a listen.

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